As the search for a new president neared an end, Ohio State University leaders had narrowed a wide pool of candidates to five. Most were presidents at other schools. The search had become intense and competitive.

In the end, they focused on a man who, on paper, might seem to some like an unlikely candidate: He is the head of a university half the size of Ohio State that is on the other side of the country. He oversees a budget that is about $2 billion, compared with about $5 billion at OSU. His university has no football team. And his closest tie to Ohio was his mother, who lived in Youngstown almost a century ago.

But Dr. Michael V. Drake, the 63-year-old chancellor of the University of California in Irvine since 2005, met the 18-member search committee’s key requirements.

Trustee Jeffrey Wadsworth, who chaired the search committee, said the winning candidate had to meet five criteria, and Drake was strong in all.

“We looked for someone who could manage complexity, who understood academic medical centers, understood academics, athletics and cared about diversity,” Wadsworth said before introducing Drake to the board of trustees yesterday.

Accompanied by his wife, Brenda, Drake was offered and accepted the job, and he will become the university’s 15th president starting on June 30. Terms of the contract between Drake and OSU have not been released.

The search group initially had concerns about being able to find the right mix of qualities it wanted in a candidate, but “we found somebody who surpasses those qualifications,” said Deborah Jones Merritt, an Ohio State law professor who led the 13-member advisory panel of the search committee.

“Dr. Drake is an inclusive leader,” she said. “He is an acclaimed scholar. Perhaps most of all, he cares deeply about faculty, staff and students and the whole community.”

At Irvine, Drake has been a skilled fundraiser, which is a key part of the job at Ohio State. He is a champion of diversity in the workforce, an area in which OSU has struggled and university officials have said they want to improve.

And Drake, an ophthalmologist, has managed a medical center. He led the expansion and revitalization of a troubled medical center at Irvine, and before that, oversaw medical schools throughout the University of California system. He will step into OSU amid construction of a $1 billion cancer hospital.

From his first phone call with Drake, Wadsworth said he was struck by Drake’s grasp of the challenges universities face amid national health-care reforms and a simmering debate about the affordability of college costs.

Officials liked his demeanor, too. Some had met him and spoken with him by phone; others researched YouTube videos of Drake to analyze how he handled himself in tough situations or spoke to students, officials said.

Drake said a search firm hired by OSU approached him about the position. Although he generally had paid little interest to such inquiries, this was different, he said. He said the new job could be the capstone of his career.

“I have been at this for a long time in various ways,” he said during his first public speech at OSU yesterday. “From the days of pre-med, to being a medical student and resident and faculty member, where you know it’s all work and you’re always building toward something –– and this had the ring of being that something.”

Drake signaled the important role that his wife will play as first lady of OSU by saying “these jobs are partnerships. It really takes more than one person to do all the things that are necessary to lead a great university, and to make the community connections with students and faculty and staff.”

The greatest adjustment, he said, will be scale. Irvine has about half the number of students, and its budget is roughly half that of Ohio State.

But he appeared to be comfortable from the onset yesterday. After trustees took turns praising Drake and his work as an introduction, he began his speech with a joke.

“That was pleasant, very pleasant,” he said. “I was thinking I should do the proper thing and die first. But I think that was actually quite thoughtful.”

That ease and humor, alongside a vast range of interests, has helped make Drake a skilled fundraiser and leader, some at Irvine said yesterday.

He is an astute scholar and scientist but also a modern-day Renaissance man who has a deep appreciation for the arts, athletics, education and music, said Peter Krapp, a professor of film and media studies at Irvine and chairman of the school’s academic senate. And Drake is as comfortable talking with business titans and lawmakers as he is with students and professors.

As the newly appointed chancellor of the University of California at Irvine in 2005, Drake took on an effort to raise $1 billion for the campus. That topped $800 million last year. Along the way, Drake helped found a $39 million vision center solely on private donations.

“People don’t give to bricks and mortar; they give to people,” said Jim Mazzo, a former chairman of the Irvine Foundation board of trustees. “He’s a tremendous fundraiser. I’ve never seen him not do it. He’s very eloquent, very humorous.”

Although Irvine has never had a football team, Drake has long had a keen interest in sports. He is a constant presence at Irvine’s other athletic events, and two years ago, he was appointed to represent the Big West Conference on the board of directors of the NCAA, the governing body of college athletics.

He quickly became a key figure on the board, said Roderick McDavis, president of Ohio University and a fellow member of the NCAA board. Drake is now on the steering committee that is restructuring the NCAA’s governance. “He’ll be a significant player in terms of the outcome of the restructuring,” McDavis said.

Trustees at OSU said they were impressed with the way Drake turned around the medical center at Irvine. He took the job there after several scandals related to quality of care. The medical center is now rated among the top 50 in the United States in three specialties, and the medical school has improved, too.

“He worked very hard with me to help turn around our school of medicine,” said Dr. Ralph Clayman, dean of the medical school. “It’s in far better shape now than it has ever been. Our medical-school applications have gone up 25 percent in the last four years. We’ve been able to expand our diversity tremendously.”

Last night, former Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee, who retired in July and is now interim president at West Virginia University, said:

“In Dr. Michael Drake, the Ohio State University Board of Trustees has made a brilliant choice. Dr. Drake is a world-class academic and exceptionally able and seasoned higher-education leader. I welcome Dr. Drake and his family to Ohio and Ohio State. They will discover, as have I, a state and community filled with passionate advocates for this eminent public, land-grant university.”

But Drake has had detractors, too, at Irvine.

Some professors said he has consulted faculty members far less on major hiring decisions than chancellors had in the past.

“As a leader, he has been onboard with the general trend of privatizing the university,” said Eyal Amiran, professor of comparative literature and film and media studies.

Drake also drew criticism after a group of Muslim students were arrested on campus in 2010 after disrupting a speech by an Israeli ambassador. A jury ultimately sentenced them to three years of probation but no jail time.

At OSU, Drake is interested in tackling the rising cost of college, sustainability issues and challenges the medical center faces, especially related to how the Affordable Care Act will affect the institution. And then he wants OSU to become a model for handling those issues among other schools.

“The voice of Ohio State always rings loudly in discussions about where American higher education should go and, as a leader of the world, where higher education worldwide should go,” Drake said.